As My World Divides
by Smidgie
Summary: Sequelish to my fic 'You Belong To Me'. Imprisonment and freedom: Holly and Artemis part ways... for now. Dark, as usual. M, for safety.


Uh… the sequel, of sorts, to 'You Belong To Me'. Holly and Artemis, divided and apart.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed 'You Belong To Me'. You are all so amazing; I can't possibly thank you enough. I hope this lives up to your expectations, even if it is very short.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything related to the Artemis Fowl books. But God, there's so much fun to play with.

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_**Beginning and End**_

They dance, like a pair of lovers gone wrong, with words and blows. It does not occur to him that one day she might want to leave him. It does not occur to her that one day she might be able to.

_**Master**_

They liberate her in the dark one night, when the moon is full and the Fowl family were holidaying in the Bahamas. She is pacing the hall of the Fowls when they come across her; they are four shadowy and mismatched figures in the moonlight. She stares at them for a second, and then turns away, believing them to be merely figures from the nightmares of her waking mind. But one lunges across the gap between them, hooves clip clopping on the stone.

Hallucinations do not make noise; neither, Holly is certain, do they lift her in strong arms that trembled and murmur, over and over, thanks to the gods that she is alive. She is stunned, barely believing that this spectre from the past is the living, breathing incarnation of her friend. Artemis had tormented her for so long with the promises that they all were dead; yet, she sees now in the moonlight Number One, Mulch, and Opal, all of whom look scarred and exhausted and blessedly alive.

They fly from Fowl Manor in a shuttle barely capable of lifting them off the ground, leaving nothing in their wake but the shackles they have seared off of Holly's wrists and the tattered slave rags she had been dressed in. She borrows Foaly's shirt and Opal's tank top and socks, but the tentative smile given to her by her onetime enemy makes her warmer than the makeshift sarong.

Freedom is such a wonderful thing, she muses, yet she cannot shake the feeling that after so many years of being haunted by Artemis, he will find her. Part of her is achingly, nauseatingly guilty for leaving her broken boy-man behind. She wonders whether he would weep over the rags she had left behind, and then scolds herself for being so dramatic. He will probably not even care.

_**Slave**_

It was strange, but he does not immediately notice she is gone. He cannot imagine now, how he has missed her. He blames, even now, the complacency that she would be here no matter what happened in his world. But now she is gone, his slender and starved prey, the fallen angel with her wings burnt off and her halo twisted beyond repair.

He knows, of course, who took her. The fairy resistance is small but dedicated, and they have an edge that their human foe lack: they are sharpened, tautened, by desperation. He is no fool, after all, even now she has played him for one. But for all his genius, he has no idea where they are, where they would have hid her from his far-seeing eyes. Her, the one he does not love, the one he cannot imagine life without.

Well. He is imagining it now.

It does not occur to him that she might have wanted to go with them. It does not occur to him that she does not enjoy their former nightly games of twisted hide and seek. And now, he is faced with the harsh reality of what he does not know. He does not know where she is, or if she wanted to leave him. He does not even know his own feelings for her.

But he knows he wants her back.

His brain ticks over, a thousand times more deadly than a steadily ticking bomb, and he drops the slightly charred, filthy rags from where they had been clutched to his chest. He stands. He ignores how they are damp in some spots from tears he will never admit to shedding. He does not love her, and he has plans to make. He does not love her, and so he will fight to get her back, because even though he does not know his feelings for her…

… she is the only one that can make him feel at all.


End file.
